The Pope Isn’t Following You On Twitter Yet? Here’s Why And What You Can Do

So, for a week now you’ve been so excited, “The Pope is on Twitter!,” right? And you followed him –you, and 625,838 others — and you’ve religiously checked to see if he’s following you back, and, he’s not, right?

Yes, Pope Benedict XVI isn’t following anyone (except himself, in other languages) because the Dalai Lama isn’t following anyone.

“Why doesn’t the Pope follow anyone?,” Diane Brady at Bloomberg BusinessWeek asked the Pope’s social media guy, Monsignor Paul Tighe, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications:

“The choice between following and not following was partly because we noticed the Dalai Lama didn’t follow anyone,” the Monsignor told Brady. “How do you decide who do you follow? That’s one reason why Facebook (FB), where you have to consciously decide who is and who isn’t a friend, wouldn’t be the best medium. We could have looked at following cardinals and bishops but then what?”

“Barack Obama follows more than 600,000 people,” Brady responded.

“Maybe we should talk about this as a best practice for global Church leaders,” Monsignor Tighe said.